About
Kei Botanics keeps rare shade plants for rooms that were not designed as gardens. The work is closer to hospitality than to retail: memberships, hours, and a rule about not rushing the leaves.
With Hall & Mercer it opened an atrium above a shop floor in Taipei. You reach the plants through haberdashery.
Clips and notes
The hour the glass goes gold
Golden light moves across a stone trough. Leaves tick. No one speaks until the end, when a gardener names three plants and the temperature they prefer. The city is a blur beyond the glass, which is how members are asked to see it.
Letter
House rules, one card
The membership card lists the rules in the same type as the plant labels. No flash. No cuttings. Twenty minutes if you are new. The atrium is not a backdrop, so visitors sit the full twenty minutes before they start looking around.
Site
Enter through the ribbons
The path is the story. Haberdashery, a stair with a handrail worn smooth, then heat and green. Kei writes that a garden above a shop only works if the shop remains a shop, not a lobby for the garden.